This Media Buying Briefing covers the latest in agency news and media buying for Digiday+ members and is distributed over email every Monday at 10 a.m. ET. More from the series →What a time to be a holding company CEO. You’re either the charmer who lands big clients then waltzes off to the next pitch to sprinkle your fairy dust (Arthur Sadoun), or you’re the wily old veteran who’s climbed to No. 1 by knowing when to buy — or not buy — a competitor (John Wren). But what about the CEO who’s actually trying to be honest and transparent by acknowledging the internal challenges to transformational change — and then has that transparency used against her in a court of law? Cindy Rose, WPP’s CEO who’s about to hit her one-year anniversary running the OG of holdcos, finds herself in that role, whether she likes it or not.
It’s been known for a while that WPP is facing and fighting legal threats to its business dealings, so how is that translating to marketplace clout and client trust in it? Perhaps not as badly as one would think.
But first, a quick review of what we know. Former WPP Media exec Richard Foster’s lawsuit against the holdco is viewed as a big problem for its exec team. The allegations of undisclosed rebates and kickbacks are as serious as they are salacious. However, they’re arguably not as big of deal as the class-action suit that has been sitting on the docket since March, largely unremarked on until it turned up as an exhibit in Foster’s case earlier this month. That one, alleging former WPP CEO Mark Read, CFO Joanne Wilson and WPP Media chief Brian Lesser misled shareholders for 19 straight months, could end up mattering more. Foster’s case is about specific business practices. The class action is about whether WPP lied to an entire market for nearly two years.
